


What Returns From No Man's Land

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 1920s, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - World War I, Anal Sex, Animal Death, Asphyxiation, Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Child Soldiers, Crossdressing, Cruelty, Death, Deception, Delusions, Demons, Desperation, Devotion, Dream Sex, Eldritch, Evil, Eye Trauma, Faked Suicide, False Accusations, Fear, First Time, Ghouls, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hand Jobs, Homosexuality, Hux Est Non Iucundum, Hux is Not Nice, Infanticide, Kidnapping, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Lies, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Military, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Murder, Necromancy, Obsession, Past Child Abuse, Past Hux/Unamo, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Poison, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-World War I, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Seduction, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Sexual Inexperience, Sexual Repression, Spirits, Stolen Moments, Trains, Trench Warfare, Undead, Unplanned Pregnancy, Wet Dream, Witchcraft, Women in the Military, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-08-29 17:02:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8498110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: The horror of the trenches blends with the drama of Hux’ old life until he can’t tell past from present or illusion from reality. While a Canadian Corporal called Ben Solo offers him comfort, another darker figure haunts his dreams...





	1. Chapter 1

He was waiting for nightfall. There wasn’t really any other option.

If might not help.

When he'd seen others in this exact situation, watching them from the relative safety of the trench he commanded, even waiting for nightfall hadn’t always been enough. They could often manage to wait until it got dark and the guns stopped, but then most of them lost their nerve and ran too soon, or they made too much noise with limbs that had grown heavy and unresponsive from forced stillness in the cold mud. Even on days when the sun shone bright enough for warmth to expected, the damp would still worm its horrible fingers into your bones and your brain and your soul. Now with winter drawing in at last it was never truly warm, not in the trenches and certainly not in No Man's Land.

The soil was cursed, he knew that like he knew his own name. So many dead crammed into so small a space and so few given the chance for a decent burial. The guns and mortars tore up the ground and obliterated the bodies- the living as well as the dead. Churning them over and over until the soil was made of pain.

They found them sometimes as they cut new trenches- the hands that seemed to grasp and clench at nothing at all, long separated from their former owners; the feet still inside good boots that were covertly commandeered by the living; the faces of former friends that were just and only that- faces, nothing more. But for the most part what they found was just nameless carrion. Nameless to his men at least. Though he’d read Theology and Medieval Languages at Cambridge he’d spent enough time around the medical students, conducting his own discreet study of anatomy to know more than most. He could often name the bones they found and from there infer the identity of the muscles and limbs. He wished he couldn't.

The remains of the man above him stirred weakly, beginning its prayers over again. It was saying a Rosary, though it no longer had the hands to count the beads.

“O Jesus, Divine Redeemer, be merciful to us and to the whole world. Amen.”

He closed his eyes and prayed to any deity that might hear him to let the remains finally die. It was easier, far easier to think of them as remains. He knew the name that body had possessed in life, had commanded it for two months, but it would soon be dead and that name would not matter any more. Nothing could live with so much missing or so much that should stay hidden exposed to the air. It would die. It would die and there would be quiet. Once there was quiet he might get a chance to escape. 

“Holy God, Mighty God, Immortal God, have mercy on us and on the whole world. Amen.”

However, it had to die first.

He bit his lip, fighting down his frustration. The longer this thing babbled on the more chance there was that someone would take a potshot just to put it out of its misery. He wouldn't blame them. He knew the horror of it, both for the enemy who would not understand the anguished words and his own men, listening to the slow death of a comrade. He’d quietly ordered such a solution himself, when he’d been sure survival was not an option. As he sheltered now under the man’s wet and stinking remains he wondered if he had even been responsible for the death of someone else like him. As if he didn’t already have enough blood on his hands.

There were still men- young and foolish- who would venture out into the gulf in the vain hope of retrieving the wounded alive. Most such men died, often long before the ones they'd hoped to save. But stories still abounded of brave souls risking everything. Apparently they received medals. Some were said to have saved scores of men single handed. He thought they were nothing but fiction. The only man he had personally ever see return alive from such a mission had come back with only half the poor creature he'd tried to rescue. Madness had been the result and a bullet in the brain had been the only cure. As the man’s commanding officer that task had of course fallen to him.

“Grace and Mercy, O my Jesus, during present dangers; cover us with Your Precious Blood. Amen.”

Of course no one stayed optimistic for long, not here in the mud. Those of his men who survived to witness the others fruitless sacrifice did what they could to discourage the endless stream of new recruits. He knew that he should have them up on charges, that he should put a stop to the demoralising of his own troops, and yet pessimism might be the only thing keeping them alive.

Rumours had spread amongst his men of the Hun deliberately leaving one or two men alive in No Man’s Land to lure out the unwary. He did nothing to stop the tales if it would keep his men out of the line of fire, but he knew better than to believe it. A machine gun was not a weapon of precision. Survival was a matter of luck and nothing more. It was rarely _good_ luck. 

“Eternal Father, grant us mercy through…”

No, no part of this was good luck.

_Kill him then._

The words seemed to come to him from the mud beside his ear.

_You have a knife. In your boot. You know how to use it._

What a voice. So beautiful. Deep and rich and slow and oh so reassuring. Nothing like the reedy, empty, helpless prayers than skittered fitfully on from the remains above him. He _did_ have a knife. If he slipped it between the vertebrae...

He shouldn't. It was one thing to execute a man for desertion, or a mercy killing for the sake of his men, but this… he shouldn't… His fingers flexed of their own accord, disagreeing with every broken noise and prayer from the thing above him, every sound dragging over his soul like nails across a chalkboard.

_I know you, I know the taste of you and the gifts you bring me._ The voice continued, filled with imperious mirth. He could almost feel hands at his back, caressing his sides where they sank into the disgusting mud, impossibly long fingers setting his nerves on fire. _Don't try to move me with empty blandishments. End him. Give him to me. Cease his noise and I will ensure your safe passage back to the rabbit’s warren you call a stronghold._

He shook slightly as he reached awkwardly towards his own foot, trying not to jostle the body above him too much and thus draw the attention of the snipers still watching in the failing light.

What was right didn't matter any more, all that mattered was survival.

The knife was in his hand, the handle slick with mud.

“through the... Blood of... Jesus Christ, Y-Your only Son... grant us... mercy we besee...”

The prayer stopped. The movement stopped. Silence.

_Well done._

“I did nothing,” he murmured low in his throat. The knife was still in his hand, still coated in filth not blood. It had not moved. He had not struck down the thing that had once been a Private under his own command. He had not caused this death.

_You would have._

“You don't know that, whoever you are.” A figment of my imagination, he added silently to himself, merely the product of a mind on the edge of snapping.

_Oh no. I know you Captain Hux. I've known you for a very long time. I know what you are._

He shivered and waited for nightfall. The knife remained in his hand, clutched so tightly it’s imprint would stay on his flesh for hours. Slowly the blood of the remains above him seeped down to fill the shell crater and soak into the fabric of his uniform. No matter what he did, he could not keep the blood from off his hands.

The voice did not speak to him again, not that day at least.


	2. Chapter 2

He was warm. For the first time in what felt like forever, he was warm.

The smooth wood of the billiard table pressed into the meagre flesh of his thighs. Under his skin the lacquer had warmed to body temperature as if he had been perched there for hours, his bare arse resting just at the edge of the baize. He could feel the blaze in the fireplace almost baking his left side from its proximity. 

Why had she chosen to stand him so close to the fire? Anyone who entered would see them instantly in silhouette.

But perhaps that was the thrill of it for her. For a respectable young woman to do this at all, let alone in a public room that anyone might enter unannounced at any moment- it was scandalous. 

He groaned at the thought. Unbidden his fingers loosed their grip on the table edge and settled around the nape of her neck, urging her forward without disturbing either the neat chignon of her hair or the heavy lace of her dress. The hands on his thighs tightened briefly in approval. He didn't look down. He kept his face resolutely turned toward the ceiling, his eyes gently closed to allow the barest light to filter through his golden eyelashes.

It wasn't her that he was thinking about. It was her brother. 

Did Dopheld know the things his sister did with the houseguests? Given the activities Dopper himself had engaged in within this very room it seemed at least possible that he knew. What a family.

Hux had spent the last summer here with him, while his parents and sisters holidayed in Germany. It had just been the two of them in that large but shabby house, their needs attended to by a skeleton crew of staff who were happy to be dismissed with pay most days. 

Although Dopheld seemed oblivious to the mood of his servants, Hux was certain at least some of them knew their reasons. The butler had given him more than one weighty look when they passed through rooms the pair of them had defiled the night before. Perhaps Dopper had not been sufficiently conscientious about cleaning away the traces of his emissions. Hux himself always took great pains with that- the Mitaka household might be lax about such matters but his own father never had been and his back still bore the scars of consequence.

He had pinned Dopheld over this very table and played shot after awkward shot while sunk to the hilt in the smaller man’s arse. They'd both laughed at the absurdity of it while each slow shift of position drew gasps from their lips. It was a great game to play on a chilly, dull night. One of many such perverse entertainments they'd created that summer.

Between his knees Unamo shifted, trying to take more of his length into her mouth and gagging at the size of him. Her technique was sloppy despite the way she had approached him- as if she were offering a rare gift rather than a skill well known to any public school boy worth his salt- but still, the enthusiasm was appreciated. As were the sounds of her struggle. It was always pleasant to be reminded of his good fortune in that department. She didn't quite make the sweet noises her brother made though. Not quite.

She was scratching him now. Perhaps he should loosen his grip and let her breathe. Perhaps he should pull her off and have her over the table, make a matching pair of Mitaka siblings defiled across the soft baize. No, she wore a corset, likely one of those ghastly S-line things that would come all the way down to her thighs. What a bore. 

He let go. He knew he did. He remembered this night so clearly. He'd let her go and she'd continued on as if it were nothing. It had taken her another five minutes of wet, inexpert suckling to bring him off; a feat that had more to do with Hux fantasizing about his plans for Dopheld that it had to do with any of her actions. He had kissed her briefly then as he'd righted his clothes, as underwhelmed by the touch of her mouth to his lips as elsewhere on his person. They had returned to the party. Their absence had gone entirely unnoticed. He had drunk port and talked politics until the early hours. The household had retired for the night and he'd hopped the balcony to Dopheld's room to put his fantasy into action.

That's what had happened. Not this. Not holding her in place until her face flushed and her nails drew blood. Certainly not waiting until she bit him to pull out and let his release splash across her face.

Unamo was staring up at him in indignant horror. She coughed and spots of blood splattered across her lips and chest. They glittered ruby bright against her pale skin, blending in slow swirls with the pearls of his spend. 

She was so beautiful, utterly ruined, all deep dark eyes and wild black hair. He kissed her then. The taste of her was intoxicating. Salt. Iron. Earth. His eyes flickered shut to better enjoy the sensations luring him deeper. Not just the churning flavours, but the relief of her chilly skin after the oppressive warmth of the fire. Her teeth, sharp and icy, grazed his lips while thick muscles shifted under his fingers. Eager for more he dipped his tongue towards the back of her throat and the damage he’d wrought there.

A hushed element of his psyche, the part that had whispered that this had never happened, tried to alert Hux to the fact that Unamo Mitaka had been built like a bird. He remembered the slight span of her waist when they'd danced; the switch thin wrists in his hands as he pinned them over her head; the press of nearly exposed bones against his thighs; the delicate structure of her throat… 

The figure in his arms was broad and solid. A being of well cultivated muscles and coiled power. Taller than him, wider than him, better than him. Massive hands pawed at his arse and he opened his eyes in surprise. 

Unamo’s eyes were blurred as Hux struggled to focus at such tight proximity. He blinked. No. Unamo’s rich Italianate irises were blurring and spreading out through the whites. Tendrils of deep brown reached out like coiling pipe smoke to stain everything they touched. Her tongue was still stroking languidly over his while the darkness spread beyond the structure of her eyes and pooled in the hollow of their sockets. 

Hux felt her lips curl against his even as he heard a pained whimper of fear. The blunt fingers on his backside were dipping in towards shameful regions but another pair of smaller hands was beating weakly at his chest. 

He should pull away but he could not move back. Her taste was enthralling and it coated his mouth like cold cocoa, thick and cloying. Salt. Iron. Earth. Lilac. Decay. Buddleja. Carrion. Coal smoke. Hot iron. 

The warning scream of the train whistle blurred with the tortured metal screech of the emergency brakes. 

She was kissing him. She was falling away from him. The abyss had opened beneath both their feet. He knew it was either her or him. There was no in between.

Hux thrashed, trying to break the kiss, trying to draw back and keep the solid stone of the bridge under his feet. 

Two pairs of hands gripped his lapels. One he fought off easily but the other was too strong, too tightly wound into his shirt front, through the flesh of his chest, between the spokes of his ribs and into the fibres of his heart.

_ Mine.  _

He heard the voice as a rumble beneath the shrieking that tore through his brain and then he was falling without any hope of rescue.

The hard trodden mud floor jarred his hip and shoulder as he tumbled from the top bunk. Rather than stopping when he woke the whistling of the train in his dream was growing louder. His heart stuttered against the alien intrusion in his chest. The pain made him sob and he rolled towards it, desperate to make it stop. 

An instant later the whistle of the approaching German mortar turned into a deafening roar. The world exploded in slow motion. Behind him the roof of the command dugout collapsed, crushing the beds in the officers’ alcove. 

The noise seemed to go on forever as filth and debris rained down on his shoulders. Hux rolled to his elbows and knees, tucking his head down as far as possible into the air pocket under his chest. Silently he thanked his grandfather for the sturdy Burberry trench coat he'd been chilled enough to sleep in. The heavy gabardine was enough to deflect the great chunks of splintered wood that battered him.

Mud was flowing in beneath his arms and he had to fight to keep his nose clear of the mess. No matter what he did it still coated his mouth like congealed cocoa, salt and iron dominating his senses as the explosion rumbled on. 

How long could such a small air supply last? How long could his limbs support the weight of the quagmire across his back?

There in the darkness and the noise, despite the urgent pressing horror of his predicament, he suddenly and absurdly became aware of his physical state. If he died here and they even bothered to dig him out of this ignoble tomb, they'd find him in shirt and braces beneath his coat with his underwear stained with ejaculate. It was a foolish thing to notice, but now he couldn't shake the cold sticky sensation from his mind nor the shame of the dream itself. What a way to die.

The pressure on his back increased abruptly and with a cry his limbs gave way, forcing his front down into the mud. Dimly he felt it trickle into his underclothes as if the earth itself wanted to hide his embarrassment. 

The thick ooze was covering his face now, seeping between his tightly closed lips. There was no way he could keep on holding his breath. Eventually he'd have to breathe out, the mud would rush in and it would all be over. 

Something grabbed his ankle and heaved. He kicked the other leg as far as he could, both to confirm that he wasn't a corpse and also to draw attention to it in the hope that someone else would help. It worked, a second pair of hands grabbed the waving limb and pulled weakly.

By the time they'd tugged him out of the mire his lungs were a burning mass of pain and the noise still hadn't stopped pounding through his skull. He swiped at his face with mud soaked hands but couldn't clear his eyes. Someone carefully gripped the hair at the back of his head and tilted his face towards the cooling breeze. Without warning ice cold water pour over his forehead, clearing his vision but damn near drowning him in the process. 

Hux tried to shout in surprise, but could not hear his own voice over the roar of the mortars.

In front of him the filthy unrecognisable figure of a heavyset Lieutenant gestured towards his own ears with a shake his head. Beside him the skinny unmistakeable shape of Private Thanisson did the same. They were all deafened. Had the shelling ceased or merely moved on? How could they tell?

His rescuers had dragged him out of the wreckage towards the remains of the main trench itself. There wasn't much of it left. Behind and to his right the strike that had destroyed the dugout had also collapsed the structure of the trench, while to his left a second mortar had landed at floor level to create a much deeper crater.

At first glance there seemed to be few bodies. Had they been lucky and somehow avoided the heavy casualties that usually accompanied such a direct strike? 

By the sickly pale light in the sky it was barely even 6am. He glanced back towards the dugout. All the officers except for Rodinon would have still been abed. There were no signs of survival- other than the slowly filling hole where he’d been huddled- but if no one had their hearing someone could be buried and calling for aid. There were other practical concerns. The wireless set had been in there amongst the other equipment. The damn thing failed more often than it worked but it would have to be retrieved. 

Hux stood, intending to locate the rest of his men. The change in his perspective showed him most of Rodinon’s platoon. They’d been having breakfast, seated in dense rows along the trench on the left hand side of the dugout. The angle of the blast had driven many of them back into the walls of the trench. They were clearly dead, some more badly damaged than others. He suspected more were buried by the other impact.

Of the survivors, the walking wounded were doing what they could for the incapacitated. His eyes skipped over the scene, calculating his losses. At least twenty dead or missing, fifteen still mobile and around half the rest were not long for this world. 

Reaching out Hux grabbed Thanisson’s arm. They needed stretcher bearers, medics, fit men to dig for the officers’ remains and the lost equipment. He needed orders, to stay and dig back in or else to move the line. 

The boy was shaking under his hand. Of course he knew Thanisson was only a child, the fool hadn’t even claimed a realistic age. If he’d said he was 19 no one would have believed him, but insisting he was 24 was leap of faith too far. However, Hux had not turned him in. He was a useful runner, fast and efficient, driven by some deep seated need for an authority figure’s approval- an excellent quality in a soldier in Hux’ estimation. 

Too many men lost the will to do anything more than survive once they’d spent a week or two on the front lines. The narrative back home was very different than the reality. Entire villages were signing up to show the Kaiser what Britain was made of, fueled by patriotism and a blind faith that soon melted away in the face of the machine guns. 

When it came to Private Thanisson though, Hux suspected there was something more. He showed fear, but never surprise or horror. He seemed to expect what he was seeing. Hux wondered what the boy had run from that the trenches seemed like the status quo. 

Hux dashed off a short communique addressed to another Captain. A former schoolmate the man was situated about a mile further back from the front lines and owed Hux more than few favours. Hopefully that company would be in better shape than his and able to offer assistance. He needed to reach the other platoons and get a clear idea of the casualties there too. Did he have anyone left that was still fit enough to run along the front?

_ Wait. Not yet. _

He stopped, distracted in the act of handing his first missive to Private Thanisson by the sight of the man in the bottom of the deeper crater. It was Major Ozzel: second in command of the battalion. He must have been on his way to speak to Hux personally when the shelling started.

Ozzel was half submerged in the fetid mix of water and blood slowly filling the hole. From the activity around him he seemed to still be alive but barely conscious. Hux hurried over, stripping off his greatcoat as he went, unwilling to soak the already ruined garment a second time.

Jumping into the hole he crouched as close as he could to the Major, leaning against Rodinon’s Corporal, an odd but competent young man called Phillip Simm. Unexpectedly bright blue eyes met his for a moment, then Simm looked purposely down at the Major’s abdomen and shook his blond head almost imperceptibly.

Carefully placing one hand on the Major’s ribcage Hux ran the other down his front. Just beneath the water his abdomen began then abruptly ended in a wet pulsing mess.

_ Do it. _

Simm shifted closer, using his superior height to block the rest of the men’s view of Hux’ right hand as he plucked his knife from it’s ankle holster and slipped the blade up through the chest cavity. It was back in its rightful place in an instant, the muddy water the best he had to clean it.

The Major gasped for a moment, diluted blood seeping from his quivering lips as his compromised lungs filled with water. It was enough. He passed without regaining consciousness.

_ Good. _

A shadow crossed in front of Hux, settling over the body of his superior officer like a shroud.

Hux looked up.

With wide unblinking eyes, Thanisson looked back. He’d seen. He knew.

It was justified. It was merciful. He would still be up before a firing squad if word got out.

At his side he felt Simm tense, his hand drifting toward his sidearm. The ringing in his ears had not abated. They could not speak to one another; everyone was on edge; his men were dying around him; another officer lay dead at his feet. This could end extremely badly.

Something moved in the trench behind Thanisson, subtle tendrils of smog and dark grey smoke that curled as if beckoning. Was something on fire? Was he hallucinating?

A sensation of cold fingers drifted down his forearm, lifting the crumpled message towards the boy in the ill-fitting uniform.

_ Give him to me. Give me that one. _

Hux almost shivered at the demanding tone of the voice weaving through the echoing mortar’s hum in his ears. His eyes drifted back towards the smoke. He made his decision.

“Go,” he mouthed, nodding to the path behind Thanisson as he pushed the message into the boy’s cold fingers.

There were two routes to the company he was trying to reach. He’d sent Thanisson down the most dangerous option. He should feel guilty at that thought, but when the phantom fingers squeezed his left wrist he found himself uncaring. Warmth spread out from the imagined point of contact until he felt like he was standing before the fire once again. All his worries were melting like so much candle wax.

With a huff of breath to ground himself, Hux turn his back on the boy and threw himself into the task of saving as many of his men as still had a chance.


	3. Chapter 3

"Cheer up, old sport, it’ll all be over soon, that’s what Kitchener says!” Major Datoo exclaimed. Hux grimaced at the slap on the back he received as the older man wove his way through the busy officer’s mess. 

Hux stared at him, fighting the urge to curl his lip in disgust at his superior officer’s zeal. 

The room was positively packed with men like him. It was Christmas, but Hux did not share the enthusiasm of the other officers he’d met here. So many sons of wealthy families intent on making a name for themselves in the armed forces but eagerly opening parcels like they were infants. Not that he hadn’t ordered a crate of cigars, brandy, and coffee whilst he had the chance, he simply chose not to make a fuss about it.

He’d been transferred to the chateau until his ruptured eardrums healed, while his remaining platoons were reassigned to other officers needing strong men for hard labour that did not require the use of their ears. It was certainly a change of pace.

Although his Cambridge connections had gained him favours, it was his years as a conscientious student that made him ideally suited for all the clerical work generated by the Army’s command structure. They’d framed the change of post as a reward for the efficiently handling the loss of a fifth of his men- or as they called it ‘the saving of four fifths’- but he saw it more as a punishment. It was only temporary. Once he was fit he’d be back on the front lines again, only now he knew how the other half lived. 

“Have you heard about the football match?” Colonel Kaplan asked, leaning comfortably across Hux as if he weren’t there. 

Ah yes, the unofficial truces that had cropped up along the front in the last week or so. Hux’ company would not have taken part if they’d still be deployed in their now defunct trench. Frankly he was heartened every time he heard of the those pockets of men that had chosen to follow orders rather than sentimentality, but he knew he was in the minority here. 

It had been a shock to him- and many of his Sergeants- to find spirits so high even a mile behind the lines. He’d become accustomed to the hopelessness of their position but, given the mood elsewhere, he had to wonder if it had simply been his own depressive nature affecting his men.

Pessimism hadn’t helped forty-two of them, but then he doubted that carol singing and a few informal kickabouts would have done anything to protect them against multiple direct strikes either. 

One of the jobs he’d taken here was gathering details for the death notices, though thankfully he didn’t have to write the documents himself. Horrible impersonal form letters -  _ [blank], it is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office notifying the death of [blank].  _ There were short stretches for names, dates, and the briefest of details, but nothing more specific. It was awful, and yet, what could he say that would be any better?

_ Madame, I regret to inform you that we could not find enough of your son to properly identify him? Miss, I was your fiancé’s commanding officer and I cannot recall his face? Sir, I had your brother shot to end his suffering but his body could not be retrieved before a shell obliterated it? _

Another thump on the back, this time from an obnoxious middle aged Captain, interrupted his morbid thoughts. “I say, old chap, why so glum? It’s Christmas!” 

Taking a long drag from his cigar Hux stared him in the eye. “I meet my fiancée at Christmas.”

“Ah, missing her, what? Has she neglected to write to you?”

Tiaan Jerjerrod, a man who’d kept rooms at Cambridge near Hux’ own, leaned forward and hissed, “She’s dead, you fool.”

Rather than apologising, the Captain seemed almost about to argue until he saw the crown and star of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s rank at his wrist. He turned away with a look of irritation and Hux took that as the signal to retire for the evening. His mood was not improving and he could just as easily consume both cigars and brandy in his own quarters.

As he walked through the halls he tried not to dwell on the evening, hoping to banish some portion of his melancholy before he made an attempt at sleep.

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d mentioned Dopheld’s sister. It had just been a way to express his unhappiness without questioning his superiors. 

He hadn’t even thought of her once during the five years, not until the dream that had pulled him from his bed and saved his life. Perhaps the superstitious would say she was watching over him from beyond the grave somehow, though Hux could not see any reason that she would. 

He had felt sorry for Unamo, he still did. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind there was the natural sympathy for a woman who had trapped in the same economic hell as himself, but with all the added limitations of her sex. Whatever else had happened, that at least remained as a quiet little reminder of his lingering humanity. 

Hux hadn’t witnessed the summer of her coming out into society. She had been six years his senior after all and he’d barely even known her brother at that point, Dopheld being a lowly first year to his superior second. But he had heard about it from both siblings. The presentation before the court; the three months spent living in London with her aunt in order to attend as many balls and dinner as possible; the many suitors charmed by her dark eyes and high cheekbones; the equal number of sheepish withdrawals when the Mitakas’ financial state was revealed. Four younger sisters to be married off as well, while the one brother’s Eton education all but bankrupted the family’s mere resources. All that was left was a country house slowly falling into ruins in the midst of a few acres of unworkable land being managed by a mother who refused to acknowledge her husband’s spendthrift ways. Many men were tempted by Mrs Mitaka’s glowing endorsements of Unamo only to be turned aside by an informative whisper from another matron. 

So she’d returned home unclaimed and drifted through the years with an increasing sense of dignified desperation. Or Hux had thought. Until that Christmas when he was nineteen, newly gone up to Cambridge and visiting for the Mitakas for the holidays while his father took Maratelle and Declan to Switzerland.

Despite their rumoured poverty Mrs Mitaka had replicated a German Christmas with all the enthusiasm of a smitten tourist. The house had positively glittered like an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. Hux was enamoured. And when the wine at dinner had warmed his stomach and loosened his brain, that sparkle reflected in Unamo’s eyes had drawn him into the billiard room at her heels like a man entranced. 

In his naivety he hadn’t realised her intent. He understood her purpose in falling to her knees and delicately opening his belt of course, but he was rather ashamed to admit he didn’t recognise the rest until far, far too late. 

She’d taken almost instantly to entertaining him in such a way at every conceivable opportunity, and the rest of the holiday had been punctuated by brief sojourns into closets and empty rooms to make use of the willing warmth of her soft red lips. Indeed New Years Eve had turned into a nearly comic farce in which both she and her brother had eagerly sought to ring in the new year in his intimate company. Unwilling to face the consequences of choosing a favourite, Hux had finally decided to fake an illness and spend the night in his rooms, a little giddy that his life had offered him opportunities for such pleasant dilemmas.

It seemed then that the entire family was taken with him, for he had been invited back for the Easter break.

Hux had been surprised by this development since there was no prospect of his marrying Unamo- although her dowry was rumoured to be ruinously small he was in no better position himself and Dopheld knew that. As the perilously claimed bastard son of a degenerate gambler his entire fortune rested on the rather desperate hope that his father would predecease his grandfather. Sheev Hux, 6th Baron Palpatine, actually liked the eldest of his ill-gotten grandsons and had made it clear he’d rather that the boy inherited his fortune, but various awkward caveats on the estate meant that his father Brendol must take the possession in the event of Sheev’s death. There wasn’t a nobleman in England who didn’t know that if that happened every penny would be in the pockets of London’s bookmakers within a year. Hux simply could not afford to marry anyone who did not bring significant funds to their union. 

Dopheld had assured him that the family understood and they simply wished him to attend for the joy his company brought to them all. Reassured, Hux had accepted the invitation immediately. He had expected that April would be far more enjoyably spent roaming around the warm Cornish landscape than at his own family’s inhospitable moorland seat. 

Instead the south of the country had endured snowfall heavy enough to trap them all in the house for much of the week.

The family’s finances had been such that they could not afford to keep the coal cellar well enough stocked to both light the fires and run the kitchens, leaving much of the house uncomfortably cold. As a guest, Hux’ room had been the one exception to the rule. The small blaze in his fireplace gave him plenty of excuses to invite Dopheld to spend time stay shut away from the rest of the household. It was almost as enjoyable as wandering through the spring countryside together. 

On the Wednesday of that week Mr Mitaka had interrupted breakfast to announce the imminent arrival of a houseguest and recruited Dopheld to accompany him and his wife in greeting this guest at the nearest train station. Which left Hux alone in the house with the five sisters, a situation he dismissed out of hand of until his early morning reading was interrupted by a knock at his door. 

Unamo had stood there in her undergarments, her slim figure shivering slightly as she made excuses about walking in the snow and soaking her skirts. Perhaps she could warm herself by his fire, since it was the only one in house? He saw through her ploy- he was at least not so stupid as to fail to recognise a proposition when it was made- though he later wished he had been. He’d returned to his chair and his book, pretending to read as she made a show of spreading out her skirts and then sighing in frustration that they would not dry.

The next hour was an educational series of firsts for Hux. The first time he’d helped a woman unlace her corsets; the first time he’d seen breasts that were not made of marble or oil paint; the first time he’d slipped his fingers through wiry hair that cushioned something other than a cock. He had never lain with a woman before that day, in fact he had never particularly even considered it. His own sex had always been available to him for free, he saw no reason to pay for gratification like some of the men in his college. 

It had ultimately been an underwhelming experience. He knew enough from others what deflowering a virgin felt like to be pretty confident that Unamo wasn’t anything of the sort. After her initial enthusiasm to have him inside her she seemed to lose interest. Hux was used to his partners chasing their completion while he sought his own, so it was unnerving to have her laying beneath him like a somnambulist. Irritated by her reticence, he’d been rougher than he intended, purposely driving into her with a force that had dragged gasps from her lips. When she finally shuddered and bucked against him, her soft walls clenching in a way that Hux finally found familiar, it was enough to drive him over the edge. Unthinkingly he’d spilled himself inside her warmth, the pulsing of her muscles seeming to drag as much of his seed from him as possible. He’d thought nothing of it as she redressed and returned to her own rooms.

That evening the new guest had been revealed to be Wilhuff Tarkin, a former Army comrade of his grandfather. He was an excellent conversationalist and Hux found that despite their ages they had much in common. When he passed the man’s room on his way to retire that night and heard Unamo’s voice from within he realised that they had more related interests than he’d suspected. Later, when she slipped back into his own room and mounted him with the old man’s spend still slicking her thighs, he’d wondered more at how he could gain such a gift from the war hero for himself than about her sudden boldness. Looking back he could feel nothing but shame at his own credulity.

He didn’t get to enjoy Tarkin’s carnal ministrations, not that Easter at least. The next morning the man had left to be replaced by a colleague of his father, Firmus Piett. It seemed that Mr Mitaka was trying to secure some kind of loan and was inviting a number of his friends to stay for the night in turn, while his daughter was taking her pleasure with each and every one of them. 

Hux had returned to Cambridge at the end of the break and thought little of the encounter, only considering himself a little more worldly than he had been before and continuing to look down on the men who paid for the pleasure. 

So when he had received the next invitation from Dopheld he had expected the summer of 1908 to be much the same as the previous one. The house empty but for a skeleton staff, just the two students alone with the run of the property, and Dopheld’s body free for the taking. 

He had not expected Unamo to meet him at the station with glittering eyes and no chaperone. 

Hux noted the looks the other travellers gave them, and made a point to chastely kiss her hand, loudly asking about the wellbeing of her parents. They lingered on the platform until everyone else had dispersed, talking about all kinds of inanities while he tried to deduce her intent.

She revealed it when the station master turned his back from them, palming his cock through the tweed of his plus fours and whispering with a giddy grin that she’d told her parents he would be arriving by a later train. Her smile was bright and excited as she explained that they could walk home together, utterly unobserved.

Hux had smiled back at that, his mind skipping to visions of having her amongst the warm summer grass behind a hedgerow with the sun hot on his back. He didn’t love her but she was a clever sort of good sport and a welcome distraction for a few hours. When the station master turned back her face returned to its usual serious cast and Hux struggled to follow suit.

It didn’t last- he soon found that even a pleasant summer day could be filled with horrors.

She’d looped her arm through his, drawing him close while they walked along the pleasant flower strewn path between the railway line and a quietly babbling brook. Kingfishers flashed here and there amongst the reeds and a pair of shrikes warbled to one another as they passed near the birds’ gruesome larder. 

Hux found his eyes settling on the disturbing display of small rodent carcasses impaled amongst the branches of a thorn bush for later eating while she told him her thrilling news.

She was with child. 

All the summer heat drained from his bones to be replaced with white hot ice at those four fateful words. 

Did it matter if the child was his? How would he prove it one way or another? Hux knew the circumstances of his birth and that of his brother- his father having been stupid enough to lay with sisters whose hair had been as brilliantly red as his own, such that he could not deny the boys’ parentage when they arrived bearing the same features. But Unamo was of dark Italian stock- any child she bore would look the same as her and of course the man who’d stayed in their home so often without a chaperone must be the father. 

Wasn’t it wonderful, she had asked as she led them on along the path to the railway bridge. 

Hux had honestly not known how to answer that.

Now there was no possible honourable impediment to their marriage, she had continued, as if that were actually something he had ever wanted.

It didn’t matter that she had no money, Brendol would of course gift them handsomely to maintain the family honour, she went on, somehow imagining that a man who had impregnated two kitchen maids in the space of eight months would give one jot for his son’s mistake with a woman who brought neither funds nor title to his family. 

She didn’t understand. This would ruin them both. No money would come to them from his father, his grandfather would disown him, he’d be forced to leave Cambridge. What possible job could he get to support them? He’d be stuck as a bank clerk somewhere. The two of them crammed into a seedy run down flat that he’d barely be able make the rent on. A squalling brat that might not even be his and no doubt her belly soon swelling with another. He was staring over the precipice into hell.

As they climbing the iron stairs of the railway bridge, every step ringing in his ears like a toll of doom, she chatted on about how lovely their wedding would be. If he asked her father today they could be married in eighteen days since that would allow time for all three banns to be read at the parish church. Of course, she said, father would not refuse but if Hux did not wish to delay they could get the train to Scotland tomorrow and be married in Gretna before the week was out.

What had his father told him that first time he left him on the steps of Eton College filled with guilt at the cost of his education?  _ If I’d had my wits about me, boy, I’d have shoved your whore mother down the backstairs while I still had the chance. _

Hux watched Unamo’s face as she spoke, barely even hearing her words. There was no one else in the vicinity of the bridge. She was right, no one came this way at this time of day and there was no one here to see them. 

The iron steps were hard and steep, the bridge was tall. It would take one little push to end this unwanted burden. 

But she wasn’t some kitchenmaid to be dismissed in disgrace. 

Her family might not have funds but they still had influence.

What would she tell them of how this all came about? She wouldn’t confess her own wanton ways, of course she wouldn’t. Once she realised he had no intention of marrying her she’d say he forced her. She’d cry rape and he’d get three years hard labour.

He couldn’t breathe. 

If she told her family he forced her then Dopheld might hate him enough to bring charges of his own against him. At best he could face a few years for gross indecency but what if he went so far as to claim buggery against him? A decade. Or indefinite servitude.

Unamo was smiling at him while she backed him into an inescapable corner.

His chest was frozen and he couldn’t breathe.

They’d stopped at the very middle of the railway bridge. In the distance behind her he could see the smoke of another train just pulling into the little station they’d just left.

Somehow through his panic, his mind brought up a clear image of the timetable book, something he’d memorised the year before so he and Dopheld could make the most of their daytrips away from the house. 

Three minutes.

His face smiled without any conscious effort from his brain. Slowly, carefully, he brought his hands up to her face and pulled her forward into a sweet lingering kiss. The words had poured out of him unbidden as if he were a thespian reading from a script-

What wonderful news, darling, what a beautiful bride you’ll make, what have I ever done to deserve this, here, let me ask you properly my love, I’m sorry, an old rugby injury, I’m afraid I can’t kneel, why don’t you sit up here, on the railing, let me lift you, who cares about propriety with my baby in your belly, up, climb up, look at you in the sun, so beautiful, I want to remember you just the way you are…

She had clung to him then, swallowing every lie like they were the sweetest ambrosia, and he pressed forward, pushing her knees back until her rump overhung the railing and her corset kept her from righting herself.

He could hear the whistle signaling the departure of the train a little over a mile away. It wouldn’t be going fast, but it wouldn’t be able to stop.

Unamo laughed then, shaking her finger at him while she demanded he pull her back onto the bridge before the smoke of the train ruined the pale fabric of her dress.

Tangling his fingers in the lace across her bodice, Hux pressed forward silently, tipping her torso away from him. He let his eyes drift away from her face when her expression finally changed. 

The driver and the stoker were clearly visible in the cab of the train, their heads pressed together as they each lit a cigarette from the smoldering lump of coal held in the stoker’s hand. They wouldn’t see what happened, they wouldn’t hear her screaming.

She knew and she fought, delicate fists like spun glass pounding ineffectually against his chest, her feet too tangled in her skirts to kick him. 

As the train drew closer he reached out his free arm in a fair approximation of an beseeching gesture and pushed.

The driver looked up at the fluttering of cream petticoats. The man had met Hux’ anguished eyes as he dragged hard on the brake lever, but to no avail. 

Unamo Mitaka vanished under the engine. The police did not permit him to see what remained of her afterward.

He had no memory of what exactly he’d said to the constable who was summoned within minutes from the nearest village. He knew he wept. He turned the emotion of his relief into something like horror and everyone believed him.

Of course there had been an inquest, but he’d taken Dopheld’s father to one side  immediately the constable had delivered the terrible news, and he’d presented his truth in such a way that Mr Mitaka did what he could to protect the family’s reputation- he summoned the local magistrate to meet with them both immediately.

It had been odd, sitting in that parlour with a medicinal brandy in his hand and Dopheld’s comforting hand on his back, looking into the eyes of the two older men while he spun the tale he’d created in the instant that Unamo fell away from his hands.

Hux told them that he had loved her with all his heart. He’d fallen for her under the glitter of the Christmas decorations and he had wanted nothing more than to marry her for love. He hadn’t cared about her dowry or any titles, all he had wanted was her. But he was only nineteen and not yet finished with university- he couldn’t marry her yet, but he had wanted to pledge himself to her for the future. She had surprised him at the train station. He had been happy to see her, but she had seemed so serious that he had been concerned. And rightly so. 

Hux had licked his lips and taken an unsteady swallow of brandy, apologising the other men for the impropriety of what he was about to say but he feared the coroner would tell them if he did not.

He said that Unamo had confessed to be assaulted. She had not said who by but she had implied it was someone older and with far more power than her family possessed. This man had gotten her with child. She told him this so he would not be surprised when she vanished for a while to have the child away from society’s prying eyes and why she could not now marry him.

They had argued on the bridge, he said. He’d held her close and begged her to marry him anyway. He’d promised to raise this wicked man’s child as if it were his own if only she would consent to marry him. He had sat her on the railing because her condition made her dizzy and he had not wished for her to fall to the floor in her emotional state. But she had become distressed at his benevolence and insisted that she could not ruin him in such a fashion. She had struggled. She had seen the train on the horizon. She had cried that it might be better that she not live at all.

The brandy was gone. The glass shook in his fingers.

He did not think that she truly meant to die, he’d whispered as he met her father’s tear filled eyes. He had loved her and he believed that she might have been able to love him. She had overbalanced, that was all, she had not jumped, it was simply the hysteria of her condition that made her push away from him as she did.

He had tried to save her, he sobbed. He spoke of trying to find purchase on the delicate cotton of her dress and finding nothing. He barely managed to finish with the moment he realised she was gone beyond help and the way the engine noise had swallowed up her last scream. 

Dopheld held Hux against his chest then and he was thankful for the cover than gave his face whilst the magistrate addressed his host. 

Of course there was nothing to be gained from all this coming out to the press. He would speak to the coroner and ensure that the girl’s condition did not become public knowledge. They would present the entire thing as a tragic accident caused by the impracticality of modern corsetry trends- a happily affianced woman falling to her death from her soon-to-be-husband’s arms. No need to bring any hint of suicidal intentions to affair. Let the girl and her unfortunate child rest in hallowed ground. 

He felt relief then, followed a sick kind of fear when Dopheld had whispered on his first autumn day at Cambridge that Field Marshal Tarkin had sent his father a  _ very _ generous sum of money. 

He’d encountered the man himself at the Mitakas’ home the following Christmas when it was announced that the now-oldest sister was engaged to be married to him. 

Hux had shook his hand in congratulations. 

Tarkin had in turn slipped him a hundred pounds in thanks for his generous offer to marry away of the Unamo problem. Hux hadn’t known what to say to that, so he’d remained silent as the older man clinked their glasses and said a toast to god for ridding them both of the issue. 

That night Hux had drunk until he feared he might die of it.

Now, as he sat in his narrow pallet bed awaiting the order to return to the front line, Hux rather wished that he had.


	4. Chapter 4

They were fighting for control of Ypres, again.

Hux paced in place, irritated and sick to his stomach that fate would have brought him back here so soon after his losses in the first battle for this cursed town. He had three new Lieutenants and his numbers had been made up with fresh, healthy men but- like seemingly everyone in this hellish war- they were untried and woefully unprepared for what they were going to face. 

A week ago one of the new Privates had confessed that almost the whole of Lieutenant Rodinon’s reformed platoon was made up of men from the same four city streets. They had decided to sign up together, in the public bar of their local ale house, no doubt after too many drinks. The very concept had given Hux such nightmares that he had barely slept since. 

It was as if every time he closed his eyes he would dream that his Army uniform was melting like mercury from his body to be replaced by the long dark tunic of a Royal Mail letter carrier, the red piping at the neck and sleeves made from still pulsing veins that bled over his hands as he delivered death from door to door. Each hour that he woke with the mothers’ screaming still echoing in his ears it became a little harder to return to sleep and now he was so tired that oblivion rose up to meet him every time he so much as blinked.

It was no longer clear to him what was more terrible- his nightmares or the waking world. Or rather the apparitions that fatigue was scrawling across the landscape of his brain to blur the lines between reality and sleep.

Private Thanisson had stood by the roadside as they rode into St. Julien that morning.

Six months earlier Hux had handed him the order than been his death warrant and the boy had gone readily at his Captain’s command. He had gone and, while he had tried to negotiate the path that Hux knew to be exposed, he had been shot- in the arm, the back, the face- and still the boy had crawled on. Through the mud and the filth and the gore. This boy- whose mother had written to Hux, to  _ thank _ him for making a hero of her  _ fourteen year old son _ \- this boy, this child, had crawled another half a mile with his life blood trailing in his wake to summon rescue for the entire company. His mission complete, he had died there amongst men who did not know him. All his mother had received was a form letter written by the other Captain’s commanding officer, and yet, she had thanked Hux personally for inspiring her son’s noble and patriotic and utterly avoidable sacrifice. 

Her letter was in his greatcoat pocket, burning a hole into his heart.

Her son was standing by the road side, just outside a Flemish village, half his face a mass of scars and his gaze devoid of mean, silently watching the British and Canadian troops take up their positions. 

Hux didn’t want to consider what such a vision might mean. He had heard enough horrors of what was in store for them this day. It was whispered amongst the infantry and the officers alike - gas. 

An unremarkable little word with no real meaning attached to it but such a heavy weight of rumour.

They said that the Germans had killed hundreds of their own men to release their gas against the French. They said it burned and boiled the lungs. Some reports were that it shriveled the eyes, while others suggested that it caused them to burst. They all said it crawled across the ground to fill the trenches and force its victims to choose between suffocation or the guns. One officer had told him that the Germans made their prisoners to lay down amongst the fumes rather than take on the responsibility for more prisoners.

Hux had seen them, the poison blackened bodies of soldiers and civilians a like, left where they fell along the course of their rout, but he had not stopped to verify the rumours. What it did it matter, the precise method of death? It had killed six thousand French in little more than ten minutes and the Germans  _ were _ going to use it again. 

They were all going to die. 

Perhaps once they were dead they would join Thanisson’s ghost by the roadside and watch the living march to their doom. 

“Sir,” Corporal Simm said, unexpectedly materialising at his shoulder to break his morbid reverie. 

Hux took a step back to look up into the blond man’s eyes, a rare and disconcerting experience for a man with over six feet of height to his name. “Report.”

“We’ve received advice from the Canadians that the Germans’ gas can be counteracted with, uh ammonia, Sir.”

“Ammonia?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And did they perhaps suggest a source for such a chemical?!” Hux demanded, his last nerve fraying away at this utterly unhelpful suggestion from their Commonwealth cousins. 

“Piss.” The voice was rich, deep, somehow familiar and absolutely, without doubt, mocking him. 

“I beg your pardon?!” Hux spat, spinning on his heel to confront the newcomer.

He had expected to find one of the newly arrived Privates, interrupting where they had no business to speak, but instead he found… well. To say the man was an irregular would have been an understatement.

The man was huge- not as tall as Simm but with at least an inch on Hux. More than that, he was broad, a wall of a man with shoulders easily twice the width of the Captain’s own and perhaps twice the depth too. He wore his greatcoat draped rakishly across one shoulder like some kind of Hussar’s pelisse, though Hux doubted that the thick arms stretching the man’s tunic would fit through the sleeves of the coat anyway. Every part of this individual seemed to be rippling with far more muscle than was strictly necessary. From the meaty calves barely contained by his puttees to the powerful chest straining his brass buttons, he was built on a scale other than a human one. 

With a tilt of his unevenly formed yet oddly nondescript face the stranger curled his plush lips into something like a smile. The shifting of his head made his decidedly non-regulation hair curl lazily about his collar. 

“Is there a problem, General?” 

Hux frowned, speechless, the familiarity of the accent clawing at the back of his brain as if his thoughts were rats scrabbling to find an escape route from a sinking ship. The man’s eyes were so dark as to be almost black and Hux honestly feared that he fall into them and be lost.

His natural need for order reasserted itself. He blinked. “It’s Captain.”

“I know- Captain A. Evelyn Hux. We’ve met.”

The man’s rank insignia was… illegible. Hux had seen for himself, during his time in the trenches, that those insignia could be easily recognised from up to half a mile away, putting any officer’s life in danger, and yet he could not read these at less than ten feet. 

“We have not, Sir,” he replied coldly, his eyes flickering over the man’s body in an increasingly uneasy search for details that did not present themselves. “Who are you?”

“Captain Hux, Sir, the Germans are making their move!” 

Hux spun around, coattails flying, momentarily distracted by Rodinon’s shout. When he turned back the mysterious stranger was gone.

He hadn’t time to waste on such ridiculous,  _ offensive _ distractions. There was a battle to fight, an enemy to defeat, and two hundred men to keep alive. Perhaps he might achieve one of those goals. 

* * *

“You’re a fool, boy. Weak willed. Thin as a slip of paper and just as useless. I would get better value from you if I set you alight and used those boney fingers to light the candles.”

Hux shuddered and thrashed, a four year old boy in the hands of a drunk ten times his size. He knew what was coming, he had relieved this moment a hundred times in his childhood dreams, but why had it returned to him now?

“Your brother’s already twice the Hux you’ll ever be and he’s blind. We’d all be better off without you,” Brendol Hux continued, dragging his unwanted son across the carpet by his wrists towards the stairs. In reflexive terror Evelyn hooked his foot around the library doorjamb in a futile effort to delay the inevitable. “Perhaps we should find out, hmm, what do you say to that, boy?” 

The stairs were below him now, so tall, so steep. He would tumble down them like a ragdoll. His arms would break. His collarbone too. He’d bite his tongue and blood would spray across the stern unfeeling portraits of his long dead ancestors. He’d stare at that pattern of ruby droplets for hours until his father’s wife finally found him. 

He would watch the sole of her boot hover over his neck, wavering with indecision. He’d see the will to kill him slowly fade from her already spiritless eyes. She’d summon a doctor and then leave without a word. It would be another five years before Maratelle Hux directly interacted with the eldest of her husband’s bastards again. 

He didn’t want to fall, he didn’t want to go through that pain again. His chest ached with the effort of not screaming aloud as he fought to speak evenly, praying that this time it would be enough. 

“Please, father, don’t…” 

“Be silent, Armitage!”

The slap make his ears ring like the echo of the mortars. Or was it mortars again? He should wake up, he knew that was the only way to make this end and yet here he hung, helpless and alone with the father that had never wanted him to live. Perhaps he would finally die in his sleep and grant the man his dearest wish. 

Turning his head from Brendol’s flushed and perspiring face, Evelyn gazed beyond him at an utterly alien sight.

There was man. Or almost a man.

Standing silently behind his father, watching but not moving. 

There had never been a man before. 

He was made of darkness, shadows and smoke curling like snakes, or like the reeds that followed the stream’s disrupted current when his father had made him drop the sack of kittens into water. Somehow the man was built from the feeling of being forced to perform such an act. He was marrow-deep despair and rage so condensed that it drew in every ounce of warm feeling. Except his face. His face was melting wax, distorted and disturbing, everything that should terrify a four year old. And yet, what could possibly be more terrifying than his own father?

_ You should have listened.  _ The man’s mouth did not move as he spoke. A mask then? The words echoed inside his head like a shout in the nave of a cathedral- rich and deep and unearthly. _ You should have let me speak, oh Armitage I had so little time. _

“My name is Evelyn!” He cried, a phrase uttered more of habit than of thought. He had never been Armitage; never would be Armitage; had never wanted to replace Maratelle’s much mourned only child either in name or deed, no matter what his father wished of him.

There was blood seeping from his father’s mouth now. Running from his eyes as a parody of the tears Evelyn knew his father would never cry for him.

_ Your name is Hux,  _ the voice continued, it volume rising until he could no longer distinguish between it and the sound of mortars,  _ and you  _ **_need to learn to LISTEN._ **

Hux sobbed. His dream child body was paralysed with feat, his adult mind not far behind. 

_ You are mine Hux. You have always, will always, be mine. Through all eternities. I  _ **_can_ ** _ keep you safe. But you  _ **_must_ ** _ listen. _

With difficulty Hux nodded. 

_ Good, now close your eyes... as tight as you can. _

There was a noise like tearing flesh. Five black claws were protruding from his father’s chest. Something that might once have been a heart was oozing thickly between the razor sharp fingers.

Hux snapped his eyes closed.

* * *

There was a cold wet cloth draped across his face. It stank. Nauseated, Hux scrabbled at the disgusting addition, keen to free himself of the stench.

“No, stop, don’t! Not yet!” 

Suddenly massive hands were pinning his wrists above his head, the weight of a firm, warm chest pressing down against his own. Given the content of his dream, being restrained like this should have made Hux panic even more, but the hands were gentle despite their size. It was the touch of a man who knew his own strength far too well and moved with a constant fear of doing harm.

Laying there in the darkness behind his still tightly closed eyelids Hux could not help his mind wandering to the thought of those hands drifting elsewhere, that sweet gentle touch cradling his body against the chest rising slowly in time with his own breathing. He knew nothing of this man beyond five words and two points of contact, but he craved him almost instantly.

“Keep your eyes closed,” the man continued in a halting fashion that spoke of a voice unused to stealth. He was muffled and each hard consonant was accompanied by a wet rustling sound. Was his face covered as well as Hux’ own? “Breath slowly. We’ll get through this. I thought you were done for there, Captain. But the bullet only grazed your temple. Now we just have to make it through the gas.”

His accent was difficult to place thanks to the distortion, but Hux thought he might be an American. Having never met an American before his brain chose to assign the man the dark eyes and plump lips of Ford Sterling, an actor he had seen more than once, a millenia ago when his life still allowed him the opportunity to go to the pictures.

“What have you put on my face?” He asked, his own voice low and quiet from the desire to inhale as little as possible of the horrid smell.

“You don’t want to know. But it’ll keep you safe for now.” His mysterious captor murmured.  _ I can keep you safe.  _ Hux shivered at the echo of his dream.

He almost shouted when an improbably thick thigh looped across his own and pinned his legs to the mud beneath him. So warm, so heavy, so tempting. He knew nothing of this man or how he might react to his own proclivities, but Hux inexplicably found himself willing to risk the firing squad for one night alone in his arms. Where had that thought come from? The threat of imminent death perhaps.

“Shush… Be still. Wait. Do you hear that?” 

Hux strained, holding his breath until his heart pounded in his ears. 

Just as he was about to reply in the negative he heard a voice in the distance.

“IIst es schon sicher zu atmen?”

“Uh… ‘is it to’... uh, fuck…” The man above him whispered to himself. “Uhhh ‘sicher’ is…”

“Is it safe to breathe now.”

“Shh, I don’t know, I’m trying to translate, just…”

It would have been comic if they weren’t essentially laying blindfolded in the dirt with enemies force nearby.

“No, that’s what they are asking.” Hux murmured. “‘Is it safe?’.”

“Oh.”

They waited with bated breath.

“Jawohl.” Together they sighed with relief only to tense at the next statement. “Denken Sie daran-keine Gefangenen.”

“What did he…” 

“‘No prisoners’.” Hux said without emotion

“Oh.”

They laid still for a moment, listening to the approaching footsteps. 

“There’s only two of them.” The man whispered, confirming Hux’ own calculation. “Can you reach my sidearm?”

Under the cover of the man’s coattails, Hux managed to free the weapon from it’s holster, trying to ignore the moment his fingers accidentally sank into a handful on firm backside.

“Yes, can you get to mine?” Hux asked unsteadily, rolling his hips to give the man access to what he sought and completely failing to regret the contact the movement created with the body above him.

The man all but gasped, “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s kill these bastards and get out of here.” Hux murmured.

“Yes… If we get separated- keep a hold of that rag,” the man said urgently, “you may still need it. It’s the only way to keep the chlorine from burning you. If it dries out just piss on it again.”

Hux gagged as he snatched the urine soaked cloth away from his face and rose to his feet as if the flames of his humiliation had driven him forward. The two approaching Germans, their hair covered with strange unearthly masks, barely had time to look up before a pair of shots rang out. They fell simultaneously but Hux and his companion were already running back towards their own lines before the bodies even hit the ground. 

He expected the zip and crack of enemy fire as he ran, but he heard none. Sickly green gas lingered here and there, drifting slowly amongst the ruined buildings and twitching bodies. 

As repellent as the rag might be, Hux still covered his face with it as much as possible. His lungs were aching but he couldn’t be sure if it was the effects of the gas or the exertion of running over the uneven ground. They were approaching the cover of the village, whatever the cause he wouldn’t have to endure it much longer.

A hand shot out from behind a partial wall, dragging him into its cover with an accompanying cry of “thank god you’re safe, Sir!” 

Recognising Simm’s voice Hux grabbed his rescuer’s arm and pulled the larger man after him.

Rodinon’s men were sheltering in the remains of a ruined house at the edge of the village, one or two of them peering out at the now deserted space that filled the area to their original front line position. The German gas attack had cleared a good thousand yards of space, but the enemy had not yet occupied it. 

“They’re scared of the gas,” his rescuer announced abruptly, drawing every eye to him. 

“Who’re you then?!” One of the privates said, just as another muttered, “Aye, and they’ve a right to be.”

Glancing down Hux noticed that the second speaker was cradling a gasping Lance Corporal in his lap. The poisoned man’s eyes were bloodshot and sightless, the swollen lids uncomfortably reminding the Captain of his brother. With a noise of regret Hux turned away to finally look upon his savior properly.

“Corporal Solo, First Canadian, 2nd Brigade, 13th Royal Highlander. Look, we can take it back. Those gas canisters are heavy. They’ll have used what they had. Not kept any in reserve. That way they wouldn’t have to carry them back. Very lazy, your standard issue Boche.”

He spoke awkwardly, in the short halting bursts like he could only handle lining up so many words at a time. Hux barely noticed. He was transfixed.

This Canadian - not an American at all, what would an American be doing here in a Flemish field? - stood slightly taller than Hux, or he would, if he did anything to correct his posture. He moved like a man who was habitually criticised for taking up too much space - wide shoulders tucked forward and down, back curved, knees slightly bent. Hux wondered if there was some much shorter person in this man’s life- a mother perhaps? He wondered what he would look like if he pulled himself up to his full height.

Then Solo was smiling at him and Hux didn’t care one jot for anything in the world any more. He should have been ugly- his too large ears protruding too far from beneath his cap; his nose too pronounced; his teeth too crooked; his eyes too expressive; his too full and soft. And yet, when glittering hazel eyes met his, Hux couldn’t imagine any creature more beautiful.

“What say you, Captain uh…”

“Hux.”

“What say you, Captain Hux?” He asked, and Hux could have sworn he winked. “Shall we show the Germans for the cowards they are? Retake all the ground we lost?”

Hux grinned, his spirits lifting for the first time in eons.

* * *

“Your man here did excellent work around St. Julien but there was nothing we could do at Bellewaarde,” The Canadian Major drawled, his long legs carrying him around the Field Marshal’s office. “After the French refused the initial retreat it turned into a slaughter, it was stand or die. We made the choice to get what little troops we had left out of there.”

Hux stood at parade rest, half listening to the debriefing while his mind spiralled inwards, a torturous orbit around a single burning question. The one thing that had gotten him through the snatched away victory and the tumbling defeat.

“Major, there was one of your men who instrumental at St. Julien,” he began when the officer asked him if he had anything to add, “not only did he save my life, twice, at the risk of his own, it was he who gave us the knowledge to even attempt to retake our lost ground. Without his keen observation skills we would have achieved nothing. I…” He paused, swallowing against the lump in his throat, “I did not see him again after the initial push, I hoped that you might have news, perhaps of his survival or… not, and that either way there might be a recognition for his bravery.”

“His name?”

“Corporal Solo, Sir.”

The Major stared at his blankly for a moment before turning on his heel and shouting into the corridor for the Captain who served as his secretary.

“Solo, Sir? I have no record… Which battalion?”

“First. The 13th Royal Highlanders I believe.”

The Captain shook his head in dismay as left the room for several minutes. When he returned he was leading a Lieutenant with heavily bandaged eyes. Hux froze, confusion and fear rising in his gut. This was not the man who had saved him from the gas.

“Tell the other officers what you told me, Lieutenant.” The Captain ordered.

“Sirs, the last I saw of Corporal Solo, he had been called away by the British High Command.”

“What?” Hux spat in bafflement. The statement made no sense.

“A runner came with a message and he left immediately.” the man explained. His voice crackled and wheezed until it was almost physically painful to hear the suffering in it. “The boy wouldn’t tell me who the message was from other than ‘High Command’, not that anyone could really understand him with his face like that.”

The room turned cold. Hux found his own breathing mimicking the other’s laboured gasps.

“Like what?”

“Poor lad looked like he’d been shot in the face a few months back and not gotten it treated right. A fellow could see his teeth through the hole when he tried to talk. Damn shame to have a boy like that still running messages instead of sent home for his mother to take care of him.”

“Was he blond? Exceptionally thin?” Hux asked, recalling the delicate frame of the late Private Thanisson.

Hux had seen the apparition as the boy stood slack jawed by the roadside and watched the British take up their positions. He had not seen him again, but had Thanisson walked through the battle as an emissary of death? The poisoned Corporal opposite could not draw his breath and could hardly stand, surely he would not be long for this world either.

The blind man nodded to confirm the description and hope fluttered out of Hux’ heart. It had be a poor and temporary roost. So beautiful a bird had no place trying to take up residence in such bleak environs. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervous laugh* well NaNo didn't work out now did it?

The gas had decimated his company. No, however the word was used colloquially Hux couldn’t bring himself to use it incorrectly. Decimated meant the loss of one in every ten - the events at St Julien has taken far more of his men than that.

His company might have been counted as fortunate when it came to the number of dead, if only those numbers hadn't been more than made up for with the permanently maimed. 

German Measles had left his own brother half blind even before his birth, and the thought of the suffering to come for so many of his men left his stomach roiling with guilt. He'd seen them in the field hospital before they were transported to longer term medical care- row upon row of men struggling to breathe, their eyes ulcerated and sightless. Some had managed to take the Canadian’s advice regarding the soaked fabric to protect their airways, but few had been willing to cover their eyes in the midst of a battle. 

Indeed, Hux and Solo had been incredibly fortunate to lay covered for so long without being shot. If he had been conscious Hux might not have taken that particular wager himself either. For most most of soldiers it was a lose/lose scenario, but then what part of this war wasn't?

His men were not replaced. Instead the remains of the company was moved far from the front lines and picked apart like a ship being broken up for scrap. 

Hux felt he should complain or object to this treatment, but he was permitted to keep his lieutenants and they in turn were allowed to choose one or two corporals to ease the ‘transition ahead’. It was an ominous phrase, but months in the trenches had taught him not to look any gift horse in the mouth, even if the thing was half dead on its feet. 

They were being housed in real quarters, in buildings made of wood that stood on solid ground. They weren't being shot at. They went to bed each night with dry feet, warm food in their stomachs and clean clothing. Whatever might be to come, they must make use of the reprieve while they had it.

* * *

“What do you know of Lucid Dreaming?”

The words echoed through the chest beneath his ear, distorting the already oddly accented voice. 

Hux twisted slightly to look up at the Doctor. It was a wasted effort though, and he soon allowed his head to sink back into place. The room was always kept far too dark for him to ever see clearly. 

A match head hissed and sputtered for a moment, illuminating the fine lines of the torso under his hands before it flickered. Betel, cannabis, tobacco, and whatever else was in today’s mixture crackled at Thrawn’s deep inhale, drawing the fire toward the drug. Instinctively Hux matched his breathing to the rise and fall of the older man’s chest. 

The pair of cigarettes were lower to the man’s side signalling the… Hux tensed. The match was extinguished between his shoulder blades with a sharp pain and a smell of burnt meat that may well have been imagined. 

Surely one couldn’t actually smell so small an area of burning flesh over the thick spiced smoke curling languidly about the room. 

He blinked, and did his best to pretend the pain hadn’t brought tears to his eyes. Thrawn wouldn’t say anything, he never did. Either he didn’t notice, or he didn’t care.

The cherries of the cigarettes seemed like the eyes of some terrible carnivore, hunting his flesh through the smoke wreathed leaves of a far distant nighttime jungle. 

Again he blinked. Perhaps the Doctor’s concoction was taking effect a little quicker than usual today. It was two in the afternoon, the back end of June, in Cambridge. He was laying in bed with the most fascinating of the medical lecturers, just as he did most Sunday afternoons. There was no jungle and there certain wasn’t a red-eyed predator in the room.

Thrawn ran a fingernail down Hux’ spine to settle just above the oil damp slickness between his cheeks. A threat and a promise. Hux changed his assessment of the situation. 

“My colleague Van Eeden at Amsterdam has been making good progress on the subject.”

Hux really should stop blinking stupidly- the smoke suffused darkness would not help him.

“What subject?”

“Lucid Dreaming, boy, do keep up.” Thrawn said with unveiled condescension. He pressed one of the cigarettes to Hux’ lips, but pulled his hand away too soon, forcing the younger man to scramble to keep it from burning either Thrawn himself or the bed sheet. 

Hux would almost swear the Doctor snorted with amusement at his panicked flailing, but the noise was covered by an extravagant exhale. If the lamps had been lit Hux knew he’d be watching Thrawn blow the most complex smoke rings he’d ever seen. But there was never any kind of illumination when they were naked in this space.

Sometimes Hux wondered if the man was repulsed by his pale skin and golden yellow body hair. Or if Thrawn believed his own colouring to be the issue. He very much doubted that Thrawn was hiding any sort of physical deformity- there wasn’t a part of the man that hadn’t been minutely examined by Hux’ hands and lips and tongue. Thrawn was perfect. 

But perhaps he just wanted to maintain his own legend. Maybe he wanted Hux to believe the rumours that he was covered in swirling blue tattoos from throat to feet, with only hands and face left unadorned. The rumour had it that even Thrawn’s member was tattoo’d with twelve bands- one for every inch. That part of his legend at least was untrue, though parts of Hux protested that it wasn't all that inaccurate.

There was much that could be considered mysterious about Doctor Mateo Thrawn, or rather  _ Mitth'raw'nuruodo _ as he insisted he had been named at birth by his enigmatic mother. The tale, such as was known amongst the young men of the college, was that the man’s mother was supposedly an exiled princess- from a region of India that Hux was almost certain didn’t exist - while his father was some officer of the Raj who’d vanished into the forests for a decade and returned with the hyper intelligent Thrawn in tow.

Hux wasn’t convinced by any of it. Yes he had an accent, but it spoke to Hux more of Southern Italy by way Bavaria and the East End of London, not the wilds of the Indian sub-continent. How many foreign students at Eton had given themselves airs and graces above their station only to be found out and humiliated before they even managed to graduate? If that were the case though, if one  _ had _ made it so far, one would need to maintain the lie.

He breathed in his own drag of pungently spiced tobacco. 

The silk sheets tangled around their legs, the richly embroidered clothes now left scattered around the carpet, the near perpetual smoke filled darkness. Yes, it was all so carefully orchestrated. There were two massive wooden bas relief carvings of Shiva and Kali framing the door to the man’s chambers. Hux suspected they were the real origin of the tattoo rumours. The objects terrified the cleaning staff and kept them from darkening his door, not that any of them was ever eager to attend to the amateur herpetologist’s room. 

Or maybe  _ Mitth'raw'nuruodo  _ really was an orphan with a fantastical past.

Thrawn’s nails made themselves known along the ridges of his spine once again. 

With an effort, Hux resurfaced from the buzzing cloud of his thoughts. Today’s mix was certainly more potent than he was used to experiencing.

“Lucid Dreaming, Sir? I’m afraid I haven’t heard the term.”

“No?” Thrawn drawled, breathing deeply in a way that conveyed both disappointment and anticipation. “It’s a dream state in which one is aware of the dream.”

“Are people not usually aware of their dreams?” Hux asked quietly, trying to ignore the hand that was beginning to knead over the meat of his arse. Another round so soon would be too much.

“Most are aware of the dream only after it has occurred, but some so notice their dreams as they flit through their brains. In fact some become so utterly engrossed in the fiction that waking distresses them.” Thrawn explained, his voice drifting towards a tone better suited to a lecture hall than a bed. “Are you saying that you are aware of your dreams as they happen?”

“Yes, Sir. Is this part of your research into the physiological structure of the human brain?”

The pause that followed that question was markedly uncomfortable in its depth and tension. Eventually Thrawn put his cigarette to his lips. 

Confused, Hux did the same. His eyelids felt oddly heavy.

“No. No this if for my own  _ private _ research. Tell me, have you ever tried to direct your dreams? Once you became aware that they were dreams, I mean.”

“I…” Hux frowned, then tried to blink. His face wasn’t following his instructions any more. “I… of course, Sir, surely, everyone…”

There were hands everywhere.

“And have you ever had another person take control of your dreams, hmmm?” Thrawn continued, gently rolling Hux onto his back. “I promise you, it’s most  _ pleasant… _ ”

Moving his limbs with a titanic effort of will, Hux twisted up and around just far enough to jab his cigarette out in one of Thrawn’s horrid pupiless red eyes. 

The man thrashed and shrieked in pain. 

Hux pressed the pillow in his hand over Thrawn’s face, holding his entire body weight across his shoulders until his movements slowed and finally petered out. 

Despite the darkness of the room Hux could see the body turning blue. Deeply, almost cobalt blue…

Horrified he clambered off the bed, instantly sinking to his knees in cold, dank trench water, the hands of the dead clutching at his legs, turning him and tugging his slowly across the floor. The smoke around his head stank of funeral pyres and hot bullet casings.

Something was wrapping around his back. Powerful fingers trailed over his chest while a deep familiar voice murmured, “have you ever had another take control of you… I promise you, it’s most  _ pleasant… _ ”

Hux woke screaming, in his makeshift captain’s quarters far from the front lines, still in his uniform, the orders to take his new company toward Montauban still clutched in his hand. 

He had never… Thrawn had never… Had he? 

Thrawn had shown an interest in his dreams, yes, and his body, of course, but he'd never directed his dreams without his consent. 

Stripping off his boots and outer uniform Hux returned to the bed, settling onto his side beneath the blankets. They were returning to the fray and he needed every second of sleep he could get. The nightmare about Thrawn made no sense, he needed to push past it.

Thrawn had once led him and another student into a dream together. They'd laid side by side while the Doctor talked them, running his cool hands over their bodies until they slept. The dream he'd talked them through had been a paradoxical encounter in which they each enjoyed the other in ways that weren't simultaneously possible. Still it had seemed real, even when they'd woken to find that they had never moved and only Thrawn had touched them. 

Since that encounter Hux had worked to control as many of his dreams as he could, but he was rarely successful. Too many of them were nightmares rooted in reality. Memories not fantasies. It seemed that already knowing the next step in a sequence of events was enough to keep his mind from inventing anything better.

Reaching for some comfort Hux summoned the image of Corporal Solo. His body had never been found after Ypres. 

Hux had found no reason to interact with Canadian troops in the year since then but he'd heard reports of the boy he’d mistaken for Thanisson being seen by men who were still very much alive. It was entirely possible that Solo was unharmed and Hux had simply overreacted to the stress of the situation. 

He could be anywhere. If Hux created some fantastical scenario perhaps he could could guide the dream. 

He pictured muscular arms and thighs wrapping around him. Warm, gentle, safe. As far from Thrawn’s predatory air as he could imagine. He placed them in amongst the grass of a meadow, a sundrenched expanse of green that he remembered from a visit to Austria a decade or more before his descent into hell. Hux had no idea what Canada was like, or even what region Solo was from, but he'd heard it had mountains and so he tried his best to associate the man with as welcoming a landscape as he could.

The balmy sun on his skin and the warm body at his back burned away the last of his fear of Thrawn and the cold of so long spent in the mud. Solo pressed languid open mouthed kisses along the edge of his collar, his large hands traced soothing patterns over Hux’ chest, his slow breathing easing the exhausted Captain towards sleep.

Hux had intended to direct his dream toward something fantastical, but instead he relaxed and let his dream self followed his waking mind into unconsciousness.

Dimly, just as he lost his grip on reality, a voice- not from the dream construct of Solo but rather the soil beneath his ear- murmured;  _ Tomorrow will see the beginning of your greatest work for me. _

Despite the warmth of the imagined sun his blood ran cold.

* * *

To think he had once believed that Ypres was hell. Nothing that had happened to him outside that thrice benighted town came close to the horrors he was seeing now.

Buried alive, ending another officer's life, surviving the gas - it was nothing compared to the Somme.

Twenty thousand dead in the first day of fighting- it was war on a scale no army could possibly have foreseen.

Tens of thousands more had died in the month that followed. Planned objectives were missed time and again. Progress of mere feet and inches was paid for with hundreds of souls a day. The price of a mile was more than any commander should ever be expected to pay.

There was blood on his hands. 

His men cut down. Friends dying side by side.

Tanks on the battlefield and blood on his hands. 

Hux huddled in the dugout, feverishly completing the necessary dispatches for the day's fighting and eager for the soft release of sleep. 

In his waking hours there was little to do but count the dead and focus every ounce of energy on keeping the rest alive. But in sleep, in sleep he could return to that warm meadow and the sweet smelling grass, with Solo’s strength to keep him safe and the wise voice to guide his steps back in reality. 

It was the only thing keeping him sane through all this bloodshed. 

At times Hux almost thought of the voice as a guardian angel, conflating it with the memory of the smiling young Canadian and the strangely indescribable man who'd approached him at Ypres with such vulgar words. 

There were nights when Hux almost heard that mysterious man’s voice whispering suggestions in his ears while he still hovered at the edge of sleep. When he felt firm cold arms around him in a parody of Solo’s embrace. The words often transformed into valuable proposals once he had settled into a true dreamstate. The effect was likely just the result of information perceived subconsciously over the course of his day, but whatever their origins the suggestions had prevented unnecessary deaths. 

And there were so many unnecessary deaths.

Despite his objections over Rodinon’s platoon of friends, Hux had still found himself redeployed to command within a so called ‘Pals Battalion’. With thousands of civilian volunteers from the same region in each battalion- sometimes an entire village’s young men- they were woefully unprepared for life in the Army. Where before he'd worried about having thirty individuals from the same area in his company he now had close to a hundred and twenty. His lieutenants were no happier about it than he was but there was nothing he could do but try hold the ragtag crowd together.

If the voice he heard at the cusp of sleep could help him achieve that then he saw no reason to turn his back on it.

* * *

They were hemmed in. They'd gone too far from the rest of the company. There was no way out. No advance. No retreat.

Germans on every side and munitions running low. 

Corporal Simm unconscious at his feet, bleeding from a head wound and multiple shrapnel wounds to the chest. Six others, all newly minted Privates, barely a month out of training trying to cover this inadequate foxhole against an insurmountable foe.

They could not get out. Not all eight of them, not these large loud men who had never learned an ounce of stealth in all their lives. 

Since sunset the Germans had paid them no heed but it could not possibly last.

_ You could get out.  _

Hux pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The ground was speaking to him again. 

Fingertips flittered over his thighs where he sat in the mud. Slowly they moved upward and inward toward his heart, while also staying in place. Multiple pairs of hands, tugging at his hair, petting gently over his uniform, kneading the cold and damp across his flesh. 

He lowered his hands to find them dripping with blood.

_ You know you can leave, any time you like. What's a little more blood on your hands, General? _

“I cannot leave my men to die.” He hissed, half turning at the gusts of fetid air against his neck- breath or merely the wind across the battlefield?

_ Then stay with them as they pass on.  _ The voice purred. 

His knife slipped into his hand. He swore he had not moved to reach for it.

“No…”

_ You did it for Ozzel. These men are just as certain to die as he was, they simply do not know it yet.  _

“I can't.”

_ The choice is between seven dead or eight. I rather think that to deprive his Majesty of a fine officer like you would be treason, and such a crime against your country would surely damn you to Hell. _

Hux almost laughed. As if he wasn't deep into the circles of Hell already. What did one more crime matter?

_ If you allow yourself to die now who will keep the rest of your company alive? Rodinon? Sacrifice seven lives so that a hundred might live. _

“Simm…” He was a fine Corporal, born Sargent material. To waste potential like that…

_ Perhaps you could get him out, if you can lay low, if you can continue to go unnoticed. _

The man directly to his left, half hidden in the darkness even just a foot away, shouted then, startled by something on the horizon. They couldn’t even keep quiet when their lives depended on it.

_ Do it. _

Hux was on his feet before he even realised he had made a decision. His knife sank clean through the Private’s neck without any conscious effort. Perhaps it was not his will that moved his hand.

The next man on the perimeter turned in surprise but slumped dead in Hux’ arms at the knife protruding from his eye socket. 

It was even easier to end the third for he noticed nothing until tarnished steel parted the flesh of his throat with a soft whisper and a sound like a babbling brook. He tried to stem the tide of his life's blood, but no human hand would be sufficient to cover such a wound. 

The fourth and fifth fell just as easily but the sixth, alas. The sixth had seen something approaching too and had turned to warn his Captain only to find Hux cradling their dying comrade. If he had stood still perhaps he might have been spared, but the Private stepped toward them. The changing angle showed the hilt of Hux’ boot knife protruding from the underside of the dead man’s jaw. 

A moment of silence and eye contact. A calculation. Both men leapt at the other.

Hux had not retrieved his knife, but the Private only had his bayonet-  a blade fixed to the end of a rifle is not an easy weapon to wield in a narrow trench. 

There was some lingering deference holding the Private back, as if his brain could not successfully re-categorise ‘commanding officer’ to ‘murderer’ even while five men lay dead from Hux’ knife at their feet. Hux could not understand it but he could use it. These newcomers were not career soldiers. They were ordinary civilians not used to ending a life on a moment’s notice. It was that fear and hesitation that led their group to be pinned down in the first place, and it would be the key to Hux’ victory. 

Years of bar room brawls could not compete with the informal education in ungentlemanly conduct that Hux had received at boarding school. He was used to being the smaller target, taken for weak and helpless thanks to slenderness of his limbs. He knew how to use it to his advantage.

Scuffling in the dark, trying to keep silence lest the Germans end them both, Hux lashed out with elbows, knees, nails, and teeth. Queensbury rules meant nothing here, far from the influence of civilisation.

The Private’s focus quickly shifted from trying to land bows to restraining his opponent. Each time he seemed to succeed Hux would slip out of his grasp with a punch to the bollocks or a handful of mud ground in his eyes. Of the two of them Hux was the only one who truly wanted his opponent dead.

It was the dead that nearly caused his undoing. Just when Hux thought he might be able to twist the rifle and stick the Private with his own bayonet Hux tripped on the outflung hand of a corpse hidden in amongst the mud. 

He fell. His opponent fell with him and fate gave him the perfect placement to keep Hux pinned face down in the mire.

All it would take now with a single blow. This would be the end of Hux’ war, murdered in the dirt surrounded by his own men, dead by his own hand.

“Hey, hey, whoa!! That's insubordination!! Assault on a superior officer!! Get back man, get back!!” The voice was deep and familiar and so very very welcome. 

As the accented voice continued it's reprimand the weight on Hux’ shoulders was lifted away. Both literally and metaphorically. 

He would not have to choose to end Simm’s life. He would not have to crawl alone through the stinking mud of no man's land again. He would not…

The scuffling in the dark ended with an abrupt wet sound, like meat on a butcher’s slab.

“Oh… oh Jesus Christ…” 

Hux finally scrambled to his feet and found the Canadian soldier standing by the remains of the last Private. Somehow the man had fallen and become impaled on a broken fence post Hux did not recall seeing in the fox hole during daylight.

“He… he slipped… I didn't… didn't mean… I don't know my own strength…”

“He tried to kill me,” Hux said smoothly, stepping forward to lay a soothing hand on one firm muscular bicep… he paused, losing his train of thought for a moment. Self preservation kicked in once more. “He went mad and killed all these men. They were his own neighbours back in the world and he slit their throats like…”

“Captain Hux?” 

The Canadians should not be here, the only other Force on the battlefield was the South Africans, but he knew that voice. It spoke to him sometimes when he slept. 

Massive hands closed around his shoulders, half squeezing the breath out of him. The other man was laughing, a halting awkward sound that somehow brightened this hellish blood drenched night.

“Yes?”

“You really must stop putting yourself in harm’s way, Sir, I can’t promise I can always be here to save you!”

Hux blinked. No, this wasn’t right. Unthinkingly he patted at his own chest in search of wounds. He wasn’t dead. He peered into the darkness around them. The pale ruined face of Thanisson failed to stare back at him.

He wasn’t sure he could trust himself to speak.

Simm groaned softly from his place forgotten amongst the bodies. 

“This one’s alive, Sir!” The Canadian said, kneeling to check the wounded man. 

Still tongue tied Hux did the same, passing up a handkerchief to press against the gash bisecting one thick blond brow. More from a need for action than concern he ran his hands down the man’s chest to check for any large splinters of shrapnel still embedded in the flesh. Instead he felt something strange and likely the only reason Simm was not badly injured. Thick bandages were wound around the Corporal’s entire torso beneath the wool tunic. 

He looked up. Bright blue eyes challenged him to say something. 

Or do something. Which would be, what exactly? 

Simm was taller than both Hux and Solo, and indeed, in many ways he was less effeminate than Hux. If he was in fact a woman he couldn’t be court martialed for that fact since women could not enlist. Given that he had served as a Corporal with Hux’ company for over a year it would be an embarrassment to admit not having noticed during all that time. 

Besides, Simm had watched Hux kill an officer. A mercy killing or not, the only one who would be shot if Simm spoke out was Hux himself. 

He had just been considering the Corporal’s usefulness. Better to keep them alive and in the Army. An accident of birth should not be a limit to talent.

“How fortunate that your tunic stopped the shrapnel, Corporal. We’ll get you back, and get that head seen to.” Hux said briskly. Decision made he rose swiftly and finally, finally spoke to the waiting Canadian. “And you, Corporal Solo, however you came to be here, thank you.”

“It seems I’m destined to save you, Captain.” Again that awkward laugh, bright teeth glittering for a moment in the dark. “I’m only here because Captain Finn refused to release me back to my own battalion.”

“Then I must be sure to thank Captain Finn as well.”

“I can take you to him. You’re back behind British lines now, we can move freely. We should get your Corporal to medic,” He paused to lift Simm onto his shoulder without the slightest sign of effort. As he straightened his gaze fell on the impaled corpse with regret. “And we should inform someone of this man’s madness. The others deserve to have the truth recorded somewhere.”

Hux nodded, not agreeing with a word of it.

* * *

Solo’s company had taken up residence in the remains of an abandoned farm. Half the roof was gone and many rooms were fire damaged but it was shelter of a sort.

By the time they reached it the officers were not available and since Hux’ men were already dead a report on the events surrounding it was not considered urgent enough to disturb anyone of any rank. 

A medic saw to Simm’s head wound under Hux’ watchful eye. The disinterested believed the Captain when he declared the blood on the Corporal’s tunic was from other men and didn’t bother to check for other injuries. No doubt any medic serving in this level of hell would have seen enough pain to take any excuse not to look for more. He departed with an order that the Corporal not be left alone while he slept and an insincere request that he be summoned if his condition worsened.

“I should stay here,” Solo said after a moment or two as Hux looked around the room. “In case anyone else finds you and doesn’t recognise the uniform.”

It had been a children’s bedroom. The only place to sleep was the floor, or one of the two undersized beds. Simm was already on one of them, his long legs trailing onto the floorboards. There was no way Hux would be seen like that.

“It gets cold in here, Sir, and your coat is soaked with mud. I have blankets with my kit. There’s nothing wrong with sharing a bunk to conserve body heat.” He added with a grin when Hux raised an eyebrow. “Standard procedure, back home.”

“I hardly know you, Corporal,” he objected, willing his face not to smile in return. He failed in that regard.

“My name’s Benjamin but you can call me Ben. My father owns a shipping company in Halifax. My mother’s name is Leia. I’m an only child but I have a dog called Chewie. I wanted to be a pilot but I’m too tall. There. Now you know all there is to know about me. What about you?”

Hux stared at him. He knew his mouth was hanging open but he really couldn’t believe the impertinence of the man. Or the temptation. Hadn’t he lulled himself to sleep with just this scenario for months?

Oh. Well.

That was it. 

He’d finally lost his grip on reality and this was just a dream. In that case, what did it matter? 

“You… ah.” He chuckled nervously, amused at his own embarrassment, even in an imaginary situation. “You could call me Evelyn, if you ever wished too, though most just call me Hux. I have a half brother named Declan and I joined the Army because I had no interest in becoming a professor. I thought I’d be sent off to foreign climes and life of regimented days. I didn’t expect the war. But then who did?”

“Ev-a-lyn? Isn’t that a…”

“EVE-lyn.” Hux sighed. “The first name on my birth certificate is Armitage, which frankly isn’t all that much better.”

“Hux it is then.” Solo, no Ben, laughed as he settled onto the other bed. His back was wedged against the wall and his legs were folded awkwardly to keep his feet off the ground, but the space left over did look just the right size for Hux.

And if none of this was real…

He climbed into the space fully dressed, unwilling to push his imagination beyond the bounds of decency and risk spoiling the dream. This was better than the meadow, and maybe the next night he could push the dream narrative just a little further. Small steps. Perhaps he should start by bypassing the fight for his life and the blood on his hands. Those details really weren’t necessary.

How odd that he could still feel imaginary flakes of blood under his fingernails.


	6. Chapter 6

Warmth. Not a fever. Not the hellfires of a nightmare, or the insubstantial fantasy of a lucid dream. Just- warmth.

The warmth of another body breathing gently against his back. The warmth of a thick arm draped over his chest and a powerful thigh half pressed between his own. 

Every sense in his body was telling him that this was real, while his conscious mind wasn’t awake enough yet to contradict him. Perhaps the war had been the unreal thing. Perhaps he’d suffered some kind of sickness and imagined the entire thing.

Millions of men dead. His own men dead.

Could his mind have created such horrors all by itself? Of course. Wasn’t his life already full of horrors? How hard was it to believe that he’d invent a misery that encompassed the whole of Europe?

_ You flatter yourself Captain, _ a voice murmured like a roll of distant thunder.  _ My war is the product of all humanity. Even your heart cannot make such wholescale glory, however beautiful your creations. _

Six men in British uniforms lying in the mud with their throats cut. The bloody knife still in his hand.

He was only half aware that he had made a noise of distress at the memory when the arm around him tightened. Above his heart a thumb began to trace soothing circles.

No, this had to be the thing he was imagining. Who ever touched him like this? Who had ever offered him comfort without the wish for something more in return? Even Dopheld had wanted something from him in the end. 

Pure fantasy or not, the stillness was intoxicating. A freedom from command, a freedom from loneliness, a freedom…

Someone coughed a few feet in front of him. 

The spell was broken. Or rather, it should have been. 

The body behind him didn’t move or vanish when his mind clawed its way into proper wakefulness. It stayed where it was, soft breath stirring the hair at the back of his neck, heavy limbs pressed as close as uniforms would allow.

Now that he was awake Hux was aware of the ache in his knees from the narrow bed. The dull throb of blossoming bruises told him that the slaughter in the trench had been real, but he had survived it. 

The cough sounded again. There was a pain to the noise as if the act of making it harmed the maker.

Corporal Simm was lying wounded in the next bed. Pale blue eyes were watching him through blood caked strands of hair. They gave him an impression of fear, but not judgement. 

It was like his brain were building a melody based on the day before, each note of information falling slowly into place to make a whole horrible symphony. 

“What’s your name?” He whispered. Behind him the oft dreamed of Corporal Solo began to snore.

The answer came through clenched teeth. “Philip Simm, Sir.” 

“Your real name Corporal. I expect honesty from the men under my charge, and if ever you’re unlucky enough to actually die in battle someone ought to make sure your past and your present selves are both laid to rest.”

“Phasma Smith, Sir.”

“Good.” Hux said without enthusiasm. “A medic saw to your head last night Corporal, but you’ve likely some superficial chest wounds that will need treatment or risk infection. There’s iodine in my kit. See to that now while there’s a chance of privacy.” 

Simm looked nauseated as he moved to sit up, but Hux saw no reason to coddle him. Treat him any differently now and it would just make him all the more likely to accidentally reveal the truth to others.

Hux knew he should get up himself. Every second that Simm saw him in this bed- fully clothed but in the arms of a man he’d fantasised about for months- was another round of ammunition to be used against him. A woman on the battlefield would be sent home or imprisoned, a suspected sodomite on the other hand…

He was warm and he suddenly found that he cared far less about his own mortality than he’d previously realised. 

Rolling over and burying his face in the other man’s neck to give the Corporal a little more privacy, he was certain that five more minutes here was worth the threat of the firing squad.

* * *

He stood in a trench as wide and as deep as the world, knee deep in fetid icy water while the hands of the dead pawed incessantly at his boots.

A column of blood red fire rose into the sky behind the twelve waiting men. It was the death of the sun, the death of civilisation, and all common decency. It tore across the sky with a roar that Hux felt in his blood while it left all things silent and empty.

The officer before him was speaking though Hux could not hear the words.

Twelve men, twelve guns, one target.

Hux waited for his fate. 

His father had always expected an ignoble death for him. After three decades as a living disappointment Hux found that that he regretted finally proving the man right, but only a little.

Twelve shots- fired almost as one- and the fingers of the dead held him rooted in place. 

The vile black mud at his feet erupted. 

Hands and terrible things not quite like hands clawed up the empty air to snatch away the bullets. Every shot became a splash of red suspended in the atmosphere like frozen fireworks or the macabre leaves on a terrible twisted tree. 

The smoke of mortars and funeral pyres roiled through the trench. It flowed around Hux like water around a rock but the firing squad and their officer vanished. 

He watched impassively as the tree of hands and bloody flames imploded with violent jerking motions, forming something hideous, forming something almost human.

_ No, not that. Not for you. No easy death for you, my dear General. _

He wanted to deny it, to insist that he was merely a Captain, that he had never commanded so many men, that he was not the one responsible for so much death across the battlefields of Europe.

But that was a lie. Ten men, a hundred, fifty thousand - what did it matter when he’d killed his own men with his own hands?

_ Don’t despair your small numbers, you’ve brought me where I need to be.  _

_ I can take it from here, General. _

He didn’t understand but the bile was rising in his throat, the sky was still on fire, all the world was dying. 

There was a man standing before him. All teeth and claws and fire and the suffering of millions made flesh.

The man leaned down from impossible heights until his breath washed putrid across Hux’ face.

Soft lips pressed to his forehead and his vision filled with gold.

* * *

There was a barrel behind the farmhouse filled with cold, and blessedly clean, water. It was all Hux could do to resist the urge to submerge his entire head in it. Just the cupful he used to cleanse the worst of the filth from his face felt like an absolution.

He had not mention the kiss that woke him to his new companion. They had been sleeping chest to chest. The brush of lips against his face might have been merely an unnoticed  consequence of their position and it would not do to risk the easy camaraderie they had already fallen into.

Ben Solo was a naturally cheerful soul. His smile lit every space he entered but that did not diminish his competence as a soldier. He was observant and clever, and despite his insistence that he did not know his strength the night before he moved with the careful grace of a fencing master. The impression should have been strange given his bulk but Hux felt the breadth of his limbs only exaggerated his power.

Hux felt a great many things about the man’s limbs, not one of which he was prepared to speak out loud.

Captain Finn certainly seemed to respect the Corporal just as much as Hux did. There was a full foot of difference in their height but the Captain merely stood in his shirtsleeves by the breakfast table, all the better to hear Solo’s report of the night before. 

Still Solo gradually allowed his posture into the habitual hunch of a man used to being surrounded by smaller people. Hux nudged him in the side when Captain Finn briefly looked away. Standing between Simm and himself the lapse in Solo’s stance was accentuated, and Hux found he could not stand it. 

A man as perfectly built as Solo should not be making himself smaller to accommodate the rest of the world.

Hux was so engrossed in his contemplation of Solo’s figure that he almost missed Finn addressing him.

“I’m sorry to hear of the lapse amongst your men,” Finn said as he sat heavy at the table and gestured for the others to join him, “we had no traitors but still fared just as badly. We’ve lost two thousand in our debut.”

There was nothing Hux could say to that but nod. Such numbers would have horrified him once, but he’d waded through so much death it hardly registered any more. 

Although the brigade itself was made up Rhodesian and South African troops the Captain spoke English with a London accent tinged with something else. Hux had spent no time serving in Africa, but he wondered what roundabout route had brought this short but muscular man to the Somme. At times it felt like all the world was being dragged into this theatre of hell.

“A difficult loss to take,” he sympathised.

“Oh no, we secured the objective. So did the British. From what Corporal Solo tells me, you and your men got ahead of the pack. Always a dangerous prospect. Even without traitors in your midst.”

Hux was not feeling same respect from the Captain as he’d seen bestowed on the Corporal. He felt himself begin to bristle and fought down the urge to push back. However small the South African contingent were compared to the British Army, Finn was of equal rank to Hux, and here he was vastly outgunned. If Finn decided to vanish a single British officer and an injured Corporal, no one would notice.

For a moment beyond the cracked window he thought he saw the face of that other man, the one who haunted his nightmares and whispered suggestions from the dirt beneath his feet. But when Hux blinked the image became nothing more than the reflection of Ben Solo beside him. 

“The Pals Battalions always posed a greater risk of breakdown,” Hux said in half hearted defence of the men he was allowing to be branded as traitors. “A noble concept but not one that should ever have been executed.” 

Finn shrugged. No doubt the men brought here by their Commonwealth ties must feel differently about those who volunteered. Hux found he hadn’t the frame of reference to consider the issue. 

“I need to return to my men, however many may be left of them,” Hux said. He suddenly found himself unwilling to linger under the Captain’s gaze. Somehow he felt the man could see right through him. “Thank you for allowing us to sleep here. Can you spare a runner to get us back through the lines?”

“No. I can’t spare any of my men,” Finn began while next to Hux Solo moved to speak, “but since Corporal Solo isn’t technically one of mine,  _ and _ I have communiques that need to reach your command- you may take the Corporal with you.”

A small quiet emotion scuttled through Hux’ heart. It might have been relief, or perhaps joy, but it found itself in such an unaccustomed place that it didn’t linger long enough to be properly identified.

* * *

Exactly how Solo came to be such a free agent Hux would never fully understand.

He delivered Hux to his company with Simm at their side, delivered the parcel of South African documents to the British high command, and then returned to declare himself officially part of Hux’ company. The Canadians made no immediate objection. Solo was theirs for now.

Hux had plenty of Corporals, and the men were anxious enough without the addition of a newcomer they could hardly understand who radiated good cheer regardless of the situation. Yes, that was absolute why Hux made the decision he did. For the morale of the troops. 

He’d served this long in the Army without a dedicated batman, he was only taking one now for the sake of the others. 

The fact that the role of an officer’s servant- which a batman essentially was- came with the perks of reduced duties and extra rations might have lead to greater tensions if Solo hadn’t been unfailingly generous with both his food and his time. On the rare occasion that Hux lost sight of him he was most likely to find Solo pitching in on tasks beyond his own. 

But more often than not Solo was by his side. That massive presence made all the difference.

The Somme would be remembered as one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Millions fought, and a million died, and Captain Hux saw it all as if it were a cinematic entertainment. 

Later- much, much later- he would look back on the strange disconnect that developed during that time and try desperately to recapture the feeling. 

He supposed that this was what love felt like. He’d never experienced it. He’d never witnessed it outside the pages of a novel. He’d never believed it was real. 

But when Ben Solo smoothed the lines of Hux’ uniform each morning, his heart creaked like a key in a rusted lock. Ben brought him food and he ate it with relish. Ben took the binoculars from his tired eyes and gave the orders Hux was too exhausted to articulate, and Hux was grateful. They sat side by side at the makeshift desk in the dug out and together they made the company a successful machine of war. 

The voice in the ground was silent during the long months of the battle, or Hux thought. 

His men fought and died but they took far more of the enemy with them. He in turn found less reason to despair. With Solo filling his mind with optimism he no longer felt that his men needed an early release from their pain. They were doing their best, the Front was advancing, and if it took a billion souls then that was the price the world must pay.

Privacy did not exist in the trenches but Hux had more than most. A makeshift door closed off the officer’s dugout and an old tarpaulin served to enclose the sleeping alcove that only Hux should occupy now that he was the last Captain left on this stretch of the line. 

Anyone could have come in at any moment. 

Hux didn’t care. For the first three months of Solo’s time with the company it didn’t matter. Until, abruptly, it did.

The first time that huge hand settled on his thigh while they studied the dispatches he ignored it. The second time he held it in silence. The third he turned to capture those tempting lips. 

They were just as soft as he remembered. They traced paths of worship across his temples and cheekbones that made his heart sing between charmingly halting deeper kisses.

Ben stayed his hand when Hux moved to caress the apex of his thighs.

“Hux, Sir, I’ve never…”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No, just… a little patience?” 

The narrow bunk held two that night, frotting together without release, each too tired to do more than enjoy the sensation of finally being in one another’s arms. 

Hux slept without dreaming. It was a blessed relief.

* * *

Winter came and froze them all in place like a chessboard abandoned by the gods. Long days that had been filled with the bitter fight for survival against their fellow man turned into a few short hours of light to fight against nature.

The men huddled together any place that was relatively dry. Anyone too proud to sleep close to another man would likely be found frozen in the morning. 

Hux kept on inviting Solo into his bed and Solo insisted that the encounters remain relatively pure. He could wait for as long as he was still able to wake tangled up with him. As long as Solo soothed his heart.

Snow covered the trenches. 

Watching the German lines across the blank white landscape Hux slowly realised why he hadn’t heard that voice while the battle raged. It was like saying one could not hear the wind above the rustling of the trees. 

Every sound on the battlefield had  _ been _ that voice. The machine guns, the artillery, the screams of the dying, the roar of the tanks.

It hadn’t needed to speak to him because it spoke to three million men at once. 

Now it murmured, not sleeping but sated, rich and fat with so many dead, waiting for the spring. 

Once or twice he thought he saw a figure striding across no-man’s land as insubstantial as smoke and trailing its fingers through the clouds.

The last time he looked before he retired for the night he swore he saw it look at him with a blood red grin. But that was just the setting sun. 


End file.
